It is well known in the art of chicken defeathering to apply water or steam to the poultry carcass as it is dragged through a treatment chamber. Typically in the past, high pressure steam is used to scald the poultry to improve the defeathering process. Another standard process by which poultry is defeathered is to tow the carcass through a tank of scalding water which is agitated by some sort of mechanical means. Commonly, outboard motors of the type used to drive boats are placed in the scalding tanks to agitate the water so that it better permeates the feathers and improves the efficiency of the defeathering process.
Reeves, U.S. Pat. No. 3,094,740, discloses a poultry scalding tank in which ambient air is past through the water within the tank to agitate it. The air is unheated and is used simply to agitate the water. Ray U.S. Pat. No. 2,994,909 discloses a poultry scalder in which compressed ambient air is discharged through baffles located on the side of a scalding tank and blows to the top of the tank. Likewise, the air is unheated and is simply used to acetate the water. This configuration aerates the water from the bottom of the tank creating a waterfall effect on the top. Poultry which is floating along on top of the water is forced below the surface by this waterfall action.
The defeathering processes used in the past, especially those that use mechanical agitating means, have unnecessarily used two sources of energy to heat the scalding tank water and to agitate it. While some processes combine steam heating and ambient air agitation (e.g., Reeves and Ray), these systems necessarily require excessive energy for both heating and agitation. In addition, these systems cannot be retrofitted to existing scalding tank structures. As a result, there exists no suitable poultry defeathering process and apparatus that is energy efficient yet capable of being used with currently utilized equipment.